2 Peter 3:5

2 Peter 3:5. For this escapes them of their own will. So may the sentence be translated literally. The rendering of the A. V., ‘for this they willingly are ignorant of,' is somewhat weak. Better is that of the R. V., ‘for this they wilfully forget.' The ‘this' then refers to the fact which is to be stated immediately. Some good interpreters (including Schott, Huther, etc.) suppose, however, that the ‘this' refers to the preceding question of the scoffers, and give the sense thus: ‘for, while they assert this, it escapes them that,' etc. But the sense of asserting which is thus put upon the word rendered ‘of their own will' (literally ‘willing it'), though found in extra-Biblical Greek, seems to be strange to the N. T.... The ‘for' by which the statement is introduced shows that it is given in explanation of the mockers venturing to speak as they do. The point then is this: ‘they speak so, because they wilfully forget such a break in the constancy of nature as that caused by the Deluge.' Or it may be in refutation of their reasoning, the point then being: ‘this argument from the unbroken uniformity of things is but the argument of scoffers, for, though they may choose to forget it, that uniformity has been already disturbed by one great catastrophe, and therefore may be by another.'

that there were heavens from of old; that is, from the very beginning of things. The A. V. makes it ‘the heavens.' But the article is wanting in the original. and an earth; not ‘ the earth ‘as the A. V. again puts it. compacted out of water and through water. The idea here is by no means clear, and the renderings consequently vary considerably. The A. V. is in error in supposing the words to refer to the position of the earth, and in making it, therefore, ‘standing out of the water and in the water.' In this it has so far followed Tyndale and the Genevan, who give ‘the earth that was in the water appeared up out of the water.' Wycliffe has ‘the earth of water was standing by water.' The Rhemish Version comes much nearer the sense when it translates the clause, ‘the earth out of water and through water consisting.' The verb means brought together, made solid, compacted (as the R. V. puts it), or consisting (as it is rendered by the A. V. in Colossians 1:17, and in its marginal note in the present passage). What is in view, therefore, in the phrase ‘out of water,' is not the situation occupied by the earth, nor merely the fact that the earth was made' to rise out of the waters in which it lay buried during chaos (so Hofmann, Schott, Bengel, etc.), but the material out of which an earth was constructed at first. The second phrase is taken even by the R. V. to refer to the position of the earth, and is accordingly rendered ‘amidst water.' And this may seem to be supported by such passages as Psalms 24:2; Psalms 136:6. Most naturally and literally, however, the phrase means ‘through' or ‘by means of water. And this sense is in sufficient accordance with what was in all probability in the writer's mind, namely, the account of creation in the Book of Genesis. That record represents water as in a certain sense both the material and the instrumentality employed in the original formation of an earth out of chaos, or at least as both the element out of which and the element by the agency of which the dry land was brought to light. It is far-fetched to suppose that the writer is speaking in terms not of the Mosaic record, but of some of the popular or philosophical cosmogonies of the time. ‘Quite in Harmony with the account in Genesis he regards the heavens and the earth in their original form as proceeding by the creative Word of God from the waters of chaos (Genesis 1:2), and this in such a way that the origin of the heavens was brought about by the separation of the waters (2 Peter 3:7-8), and the origin of the land by the gathering together of the waters (2 Peter 3:9-10) (Weiss, Bib. Theol. ii. p. 224, Clark's Trans.). by the word of God. In reference to the ‘God said' of the Mosaic record, and resembling the statement in Hebrews 11:3, but not equivalent to the ultimate identification of the creative word with the personal Word or Son which we have in John (John 1:3; as also in Hebrews 1:2). The final explanation of the origin of the earth, therefore, was to be sought not in the water, much as that had to do with it, but in the expressed Will of a Creator. From this Will the ‘all things' at first received their form, and upon it they depended for the constancy and permanence to which the scoffers would appeal. The relation in which this statement on the formation of a heaven and an earth in the beginning stands to what follows, is somewhat uncertain. The connection of thought may be that, as they owed their first construction to the Word of God, they owe their continuance entirely to the same Word of God, and their present constancy, therefore, is no argument against then-being yet broken in upon by the Lord's Advent. Or it may be that the origination of the existing heaven and earth out of the prior chaos is itself adduced, before even the Deluge is referred to, as an instance, which ought to be well known to these scoffers, of that change in the established order of things which they will wish to deny. Or, as is supposed by many, the point may be that there was at least one vast inroad upon the apparently changeless system of the world of which these parties could not be ignorant, but by wilful purpose, namely the Deluge; and that the very element which the Word of God used in first preparing that solid earth and ‘all things' was employed by the same word in destroying them.